ARTICLES ABOUT NORMAN BRAMAN BY DATE - PAGE 3

The Eagles' front office and coaching staff had a seemingly difficult decision to make in 1985. They could have re-signed holdout Dennis Harrison, a defensive end and fan favorite who had 12 sacks in 1984. Instead, the Eagles paid $1.38 million to buy out Reggie White's contract from the USFL and then signed him to a four-year deal worth $1.65 million. Those numbers were overwhelming during an era of "fiscal sanity" preached by owner Norman Braman. But then, the Eagles were overwhelmed by White's talent.

THE EAGLES wanted $15 million up front from Temple before they would allow the football team to play in the stadium. Temple is a school that is just developing its football program in the modern era. It is a mainstay for the impoverished student with a large number of scholarships and a liberal student loan program. I would not have become a lawyer if it was not for Temple's reasonable cost 40 years ago. Now the Eagles want to ransom Temple University to allow it to play football in the new stadium.

Leonard Tose, who owned the Eagles at the time of their only Super Bowl appearance in 1981, is hospitalized at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and has been for more than two weeks. Hospital officials, while confirming the presence of the 87-year-old Tose, would not release any information about his condition or the nature of his ailment, citing the wishes of the family. Friends who have visited the former owner there say that his health is failing. "It's up and down," former Eagles general manager Jim Murray said yesterday, shortly after leaving the hospital.

He had it all - and lost it. But Leonard Tose, the former bon vivant and jet-setter who owned the Philadelphia Eagles, is a proud man. Though the Eagles, the Main Line mansion, the wives (five), the keep-'em-coming bottles of Dom Perignon, the helicopter, and the limos are long gone - and though he admits, "I blew it," Tose insisted: "I don't want any pity . . . . "I'm doing all right for a man of my age, 87," he said the other day in a telephone interview from the Center City hotel room that's now his home.

LEONARD TOSE flew 762 people to New Orleans on chartered flights the year the Eagles went to the Super Bowl. He was married to Caroline then, and his guest list included her hairdresser, Mr. Vincent. It also included a comic, Don Rickles, and a cardinal, John Krol. "It's halftime," Tose recalled, rummaging in the musty attic of his memory, "and the cardinal takes me to the back of the box. He says, 'We're gonna lose,' and I say, 'Your Eminence, it's only halftime.' "And he says, 'Leonard, we don't always get what we pray for.' " Tose is 86 now, broke and battered and belligerent.

Seven years ago, Jeffrey Lurie bought the Philadelphia Eagles for $185 million, the most ever paid for a National Football League team. It seemed absurd - who would pay top dollar for a team that hadn't won an NFL championship since the pre-Super Bowl days of 1960? Who would leverage a family fortune to buy a football franchise stuck in an economically depressed city and whose previous owners had alienated the team's fan base? Leonard Tose almost lost the Birds to gambling debts in the 1980s and threatened to move them to Phoenix.

It's easy to romanticize the road not taken. What if you'd married your first real love? Where would you be now if you had gone to a different college? How would things have been different if the Eagles had hired Jeff Fisher instead of Rich Kotite back on Jan. 8, 1991? "I believe I could have been successful with that team," said Fisher, who will make his return to Veterans Stadium when his Tennessee Titans play the Eagles tomorrow night. "That was a very good team. " It was. Fisher was 32 years old the day his mentor, Buddy Ryan, was fired by Norman Braman.

The "medical reject" and the rookie failure returned to end their lengthy, storied careers in Philadelphia. But why? Running back Keith Byars was a star at Ohio State whom Buddy Ryan dismissed in a radio interview the night before the draft because of a foot injury, then selected him with his first pick as Eagles coach in 1986. Byars had success with the Dolphins, Patriots and Jets after he left the Birds just before the 1993 season. Linebacker Seth Joyner, an eighth-round pick in '86 out of University of Texas-El Paso who was cut just before the season (then re-signed early in the season)

Wherever their distinguished NFL careers took them, Keith Byars and Seth Joyner felt like Philadelphia Eagles. "My heart stayed in Philadelphia," Byars said. "It was just my body that left. Miami, New England - I played for those teams, but I was an Eagle in my heart. " "Everywhere I go," Joyner said, "even outside the country, I run into people who remember me as a Philadelphia Eagle. When I come back here, I still got a lot of love from the fans here. They remember the good times.

Doug Flutie quarterbacking the Eagles instead of Randall Cunningham? Right now, even? An interesting tidbit in the Buffalo Bills media package this week indicates that it might have been in the works in 1985. According to Tom Coughlin, the Jacksonville Jaguars head coach, ex-Eagles owner Leonard Tose pursued the possibility of swinging a trade with Buffalo for the No. 1 pick and the opportunity to select Flutie in the '85 draft. Coughlin had coached Flutie, the 1984 Heisman Trophy winner, for three years at Boston College before joining Marion Campbell's staff as Eagles receivers coach in '84. The Eagles, with the No. 9 pick in the first round, apparently contacted Buffalo owner Ralph Wilson, expressing interest in a trade intended to land Flutie.